With the trade deadline less than a month away, the Los Angeles Lakers are looking to make another move or two to further solidify their roster. The magnitude of trade remains to be seen, but perhaps a star caliber player, like Zach LaVine from the Chicago Bulls, could be an intriguing option.
However, the issue as to why LaVine has not been moved yet is due to his contract. The former UCLA Bruin signed a five-year, $215 million max contract with Chicago during the 2022 offseason. There is no denying that the athletic guard is talented, but it requires a fair amount of moving pieces to make the money match.
As L.A. does have some larger scale contracts to offer, moving off of D’Angelo Russell to acquire Dorian Finney-Smith dampens their chances to make trade talks enticing. L.A. did indeed have conversations with the Bulls, but they did not pan out given the Lakers recent moves, via Joe Cowley of the Chicago Sun Times:
“The Chicago Bulls have made it no secret that they’ve tried to trade Zach LaVine. Earlier this season, the Bulls held trade talks with the Los Angeles Lakers. Those talks didn’t go very far, and with the Lakers having traded D’Angelo Russell to the Brooklyn Nets, it’s unlikely those talks will pick back up.”
With the new NBA CBA, more teams are not willing to surrender valuable assets to acquire players anymore. General managers are now more cautious of who and what they trade, making trade discussions tedious.
But, seeing how talented LaVine is, one team is going to sell themselves on the idea that he is the missing piece. The 29-year-old is not having a bad season as he is averaging 23.6 points on 54.8% from the field and 44.4% from 3-point range.
Ultimately, this is probably the lowest LaVine’s value is going to be and a team is eventually going to trade for him. While he is familiar with the L.A. area, general manager Rob Pelinka simply needs to focus on marginal moves to continue to give LeBron James and Anthony Davis a chance to compete for a title.
Austin Reaves won’t be included in any Zach LaVine deals with Bulls
If the Lakers want to go star hunting now or late, talks are going to center around Austin Reaves. Whether it makes sense or not remains to be seen, but that is going to be the No. 1 ask out of teams. When it comes to Zach LaVine, the Lakers are unsurprisingly not willing to include Reaves in any potential packages.
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